‘Enron’ Is Broadway’s $4 Million Flop, ‘Family Week’

Norbert Leo Butz, center, as Jeffrey Skilling in the play "Enron" in New York. The production, written by by Lucy Prebble, was at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Photographer: Joan Marcus/Jeffrey Richards Ass. via Bloomberg

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Enron still has enough energy to
shatter records.

The Houston-based company’s $63.4 billion collapse in 2001
was the biggest up to that time. The collapse of “Enron,”
Broadway’s $4 million import from London, is easily the most
shocking bust of the season now coming to an end.

Audience members at today’s matinee performance, the first
since the closing notice was posted last night, expressed
puzzlement about the closing. Television ads for the play have
inundated local programs since it began previews on April 8.

“We spent a lot of advertising money on TV over recent
weeks, the show was in your face everywhere, and there was just
no response,” Philip J. Smith, chairman and co-chief executive
officer of the Shubert Organization, said in an interview.
“Maybe it was just too contemporary.”

“Enron,” which is running at the Broadhurst Theatre, will
close Sunday after a puny three-week run. In addition to being
the show’s landlord, Shubert was a co-producer of “Enron,”
with what Smith called a “substantial stake” in the show.

Another key factor in the decision to shut down was the
failure of “Enron” to garner the important Tony nominations
that might have given it a boost at the box office. Although it
came away from Tuesday’s announcement with four nominations,
“Enron” was notably absent from the best play, best direction
and best actor categories.

The Lucy Prebble play-with-music (the “score,” oddly, was
one of the nominations “Enron” got) left most American critics
advertising their ignorance of financial matters while wondering
what the fuss was all about.

‘Chilling Precursor’

Bloomberg critic John Simon was in the positive side of
that camp, calling the show “an astonishing thrill ride through
the high-flying ‘90s and a chilling precursor to everything that
would follow.”

With no significant advance bookings and no activity at the
box office, the decision to close was prudent.

He wasn’t smarting too much, Smith added. Shows in Shubert
theaters, several of which the company had also invested in or
co-produced, walked off with 62 Tony nominations. The winners
are announced on Sunday, June 13.

Broadway openings come to a stop with the Tony nominations,
after several frantic weeks of openings followed by the
inevitable culling that “Enron” begins.

‘Family Week’

Off-Broadway is another matter, with smaller companies
getting into high gear for the summer season. Had filmmaker
Jonathan Demme chosen to make his stage-directing debut uptown,
he, too, would probably be hanging a closing notice.

Instead, his good work on Beth Henley’s “Family Week”
will continue to be on display at the Lortel Theatre in
Greenwich Village for anyone in the mood for an excruciating
downer.

Henley won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for “Crimes of the
Heart,” about three sisters struggling to cope with a laundry-list of shocking events, not the least of which is murder.

“Family Week” stars Rosemarie DeWitt -- the sane title
character in Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married” -- as Claire, a
middle-aged mother whose life has fallen apart in the wake of
her son’s murder.

On hand at Claire’s rehab clinic to provide what only a
Southern Gothicist like Henley could think of as support are her
mother, her inexplicably black sister and her noisy teenage
daughter. They’re instructed by a typically clueless therapist
to share their “primary emotions” with the fragile but oddly
unsympathetic Claire.

Great Cast

The fine and refreshingly game cast includes Kathleen
Chalfant as Mom, Quincy Tyler Bernstine as Sis and Sami Gayle as
the daughter.

“Family Week” has been rattling around the theater world
for a long time, but Demme’s attractive rehab on behalf of the
invaluable MCC Theater is as ineffectual as poor Claire’s
shrink.